POLICE: Officer who lost his legs in a crash is back with the CHP after passing difficult tests on prosthetics.

By Don Thompson

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WEST SACRAMENTO – A California Highway Patrol officer who lost both legs in a traffic accident last year is returning to work on “bionic legs” after proving his fitness with tests such as running the 100-yard dash in 20 seconds.

“I probably still could outrun four or five guys in my office, even on these legs,” officer Mike Remmel joked Wednesday after demonstrating his new prostheses at the CHP academy in West Sacramento.

Remmel, 47, is the first double amputee to be cleared for field duty after passing the CHP’s difficult test using what officers call his “bionic legs,” said CHP spokesman Tom Marshall.

Besides sprinting the length of a football field, new cadets and veterans returning from injuries must run 550 meters in two minutes, climb a steep hill, drag a weight and complete several agility tests.

Remmel spent more than a year in rehabilitation and training before passing the last test and getting his doctor’s clearance Aug. 10, exactly 19 months after he lost his legs. He quietly returned to work four days later. CHP brass recruited him to give a motivational talk to cadets Wednesday and invited the media.

Remmel was completing a traffic accident investigation just after dusk Jan. 10, 2006, alongside Highway 49 near his hometown of Sonora. A confused 80-year-old driver struck him at 45 mph, sending him flying 23 feet over a tow truck.

He lost his left leg above the knee and his right leg below the knee. Three days later, Remmel came out of sedation after a near constant series of surgeries. He almost immediately began telling the officers around his bed that he would one day rejoin them on patrol. “No one believed me then,” he said.

He learned to use a $40,000 computerized leg that can gauge his stride and react accordingly – technology recently developed largely for wounded soldiers returning from Iraq.

To pass the CHP’s running tests, Remmel used a $30,000 pair of lighter, springier metal legs. He’s run the 100 yards in 17.2 seconds – 18.6 seconds when he’s wearing his bulletproof vest and gun belt.

“When I first started doing this, I was falling every 10 yards or so,” Remmel said in an interview. Now he is so fast that he is considering competing in sports events for athletes with disabilities.

Using his computerized legs, Remmel played golf again for the first time Monday – and shot a better score than before the accident.

“I needed my old life to come back as much as possible,” Remmel said of his motivation. “I needed to know that nothing ended – and so far it hasn’t.”